Windows Media works in an asynchronous manner. The WM Decompressor (IWMReader) requires that you provide a class deriving from IWMReader (and, optionally, IWMReaderAdvanced) to receive information Each delivery of uncompressed media arrives in an OnSample method Status messages arrive in an OnStatus method. The main difficulty that arrives from this approach is that ALL messages funnel through a single function. Audio data and Video data arrive in the same function. Even worse, status messages for file opened, clock error, http buffering, and DRM requirements all arrive in the same function! In order to handle this properly, a "chain of event handlers" class was developed (WMHandler) Any object wishing to receive data or status messages can derive from the WMHandler. All unhandled messages are automatically passed to the next handler in the chain. Messages that are handled can be passed or not passed based on programming requirements. The main object sets up the chain. The >> operator has been convienently defined to faciliate the chaining. The left side of the >> line must be the source (WMCallback) (e.g. callback >> clock >> drm >> video >> audio >> wait >> this;) Handlers may create their own mini-chains (which will get added in-whole) using the WMHandler::Inject() method. Threading ------ 7 basic threads 1. Main (Windows) thread 2. Callback/OnStatus thread 3. Audio Decoder thread 4. Video Decoder thread 5. Audio buffering thread (ours) 6. Video buffering thread (ours) 7. Buffering-percent status thread (ours) There might be additional threads (created in another module) calling in, for functions like getextendedfileinfo